


Buffy & Marcie: Power

by womanaction



Series: Buffy Meta [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 10:58:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11034798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanaction/pseuds/womanaction
Summary: Brief meta on Marcie Ross originally posted on Tumblr in 2015.





	Buffy & Marcie: Power

“It isn’t this great power she can control. It’s something that was done to her.” - Buffy Summers (about Marcie Ross, 1x11)

This gives me a lot of feelings because it’s such a statement about where the whole show ends up. As it unfolds, we see more and more how Slayerhood is a curse, something that is _done to_ a woman. The prophecy in the very next episode. The Cruciamentum. The Council’s treatment of rogue Slayers. The story of the First Slayer. Buffy’s sacrifice and subsequent resurrection. The entire story arc of Season 7.

What at first appears to be an empowering gift is shown to be something that was done to the Slayers. The very first Slayer was forcibly imbued with the demonic essence, and none of the Slayers have had the opportunity to resist their Calling. Buffy tries time and time again, but she cannot quit, even when she dies (twice!!!).

Yet by the end of the show, Buffy has also learned that she can reclaim her power. “I have [power], they don’t”, she says of the council in 5x12. By the end of the series, they destroy the entire “Slayer lineage” system by simultaneously Calling all Potential Slayers. It’s a moment of incredible empowerment, and it’s also a new era of choice. If not only one girl in all the world is the Slayer, no one has to be, and the Calling does not have to last until death.

Yet Marcie disappears quite literally into the governmental system (potentially the same one that would birth the Initiative and similar projects). She never gets to reclaim that power for herself. At this time, Buffy doesn’t seem to realize how similar they are in that aspect (the episode parallels their outcast status, not their unwanted supernatural abilities). 

It’s just a little sad.


End file.
